Lucky at cards but not at love
by MLaw
Summary: Napoleon and Illya are keeping themselves occupied while babysitting an innocent at a safehouse. Originally posted for the "Mood-Y" Challenge on section7mfu, Live Journal. The prompt was the word, "calculating."


The two men sat across from each other at the simple card table, staring wordlessly, and seemingly showing no sign of what was going on in their heads.

One a handsome brunette with chiseled features and an impish gleam in his eyes, the other a long haired blond, boyishly handsome with eyes so blue one would mistake them for the waters of the Aegean sea.

You remember the rules as I explained them to you tovarisch?"

"Excuse me, eidetic memory? Just deal the cards," Illya answered impatiently.

"My, my, so eager to lose your money already?" Napoleon smiled, though after his partner's reminder about his memory, he wondered if it was such a good idea to engage Illya in a game of chance.

"Speak for yourself Americanskii," the Russian smiled knowingly.

"Hey, remember we're not playing Durak here." *

"I know,"Illya rolled his eyes for possibly the third time that evening. "You explained the rules to me several times so I do believe I know the difference between the two card games. Now may we play before I get bored and go to bed."

"You can't go to bed just yet, remember; we're babysitting a witness in this flea bag of a safe house for another twenty-four hours."

Kuryakin to absent mindedly tap the face of his watch, but unbeknownst to his partner, the wiley Russian was calculating his odds of winning this card game and taking Napoleon for every dime he had on him.

That was literally the truth as Solo claimed to be broke and only had a roll of dimes that he'd packed away to do laundry at the laundromat at the end of the week.

Being the clothes horse that he was, he had frequent changes, making for quite a large bag of laundry after nearly a week of this babysitting job. Illya on the other hand was on his own, which suited the Russian fine as he scrubbed his clothing clean when needed in a utility sink in the back of the house.

A load of laundry was priced at .20 cents to wash and .10 cents to dry, so only one roll of dimes would have been more than sufficient to get the job done. Solo shook his head at his partner's cheap-skatedness, making a few wisecracks but was unsuccessful at getting a rise out of Kuryakin.

Napoleon actually seemed to be getting a more visceral reaction from the Russian regarding the card game than from his laundry-related taunts.

Solo divvied up the deck, each of them getting half of the fifty-two cards as their hand.

"Okay chum, dealer goes first."

"Yes I know." Illya was now drumming his fingers on the table top, hoping it would bother the American. Though Solo was a patient and calculating man, capable of brilliant strategies; there were little things Kuryakin could do to throw him off is game...

Napoleon threw down the first card face up, starting the discard pile, followed by Illya throwing one of his, matching the suit.

This went on at lightning fast speed for several minutes, until the American threw down an eight, allowing him to change the suit.

Hearts," he called out.

Illya smiled, throwing down an eight of his own and changing the suit again to spades.

Napoleon, unable to match it was forced to take the entire discard pile...adding a dozen cards to his hand.

He made no gesture, no sound of exasperation but his eyes were his 'tell,' showing his annoyance.

The play began again, with Napoleon discarding a King of hearts.

Illya threw down a King of spades, again changing the suit, knowing through the process of elimination that his partner now had some cards in that suit, a few clubs, diamonds... all the hearts save one, and the two eights that had been discarded.

Having enough of all the suits, except hearts, plus the two remaining eights in his hand, Illya calculated he could outlast Napoleon and win the game if he counted the cards correctly. And he rarely made a mistake when it came to counting.

The discarding of cards continued at a fast pace until Solo had gotten rid of all his hearts, but each time Illya matched the number instead of the suit, and finally used one of his eights to change the suit to hearts.

Napoleon was down to two card, as Jack of spades and the eight of clubs and couldn't do a thing but surrender his remaining eight card, for some reason matching it as a heart, thinking he'd thrown down all of them, leaving his partner with none.

However, that was a miscalculation on his part.

Illya threw down the one card he'd been hoarding, the Jack of hearts.

Napoleon had no Jacks...and again he had to pick up the discard pile, realizing Illya had only one card left in his hand.

What ever Napoleon threw down, Illya could match it as he had one single trump card...an eight.

Solo put down his King of hearts, and Illya of course discarded the eight and won the game with a triumphant response in Russian.

"Kha! Vot tak_ ha! So there!"

"You know tovarisch for someone who never played this game before, you sure seemed to know what you were doing. Did you lie to me about never having played Crazy Eights?"

"I merely followed the rules and kept track of the cards. Based upon what I had in my initial hand I already knew what you had in yours and by the process of elimination I was able to track what remained. I was able to manipulate you into discarding the suit that was the majority of your cards...I simply made some mathematical calculations figuring the odds at which you would most likely discard based on the card I threw down."

"In other words you counted cards."

To put it in simpler terms...yes." The Russian smiled, claiming the roll of dimes as his prize.

"You know if we were in Las Vegas you would have been thrown out of any casino for card counting," Napoleon groused.

Kuryakin flashed a wry smile. "Ahhhh, but we are not in Vegas my friend. and if we were, we most certainly would not have been playing a card game called Crazy Eights. So as you have often pointed out to me...all is fair in love and war."

"Yes I have tovarisch. Hey can you do me a favor?" Napoleon asked sheepishly.

"What might that be?" Illya cocked his head to the side, trying not to smirk.

"Could you loan me some money to do my laundry?"

Napoleon waited for the requisite rolling of those blue eyes, but instead Illya grinned; tossing the roll of coins back to him, plus one loose dime for good measure.

"Gee thanks pal, I appreciate it."

"Just remember, you owe me ten dollars and ten cents Napoleon...I will add it to your tab."

"...And ten cents. Hmmm, how could I forget?" Solo gathered the dimes to his side of the table, sticking them in his pocket.

"Somehow you always seem to do so," the Russian looked at him, giving him a bit of the stink eye.

Napoleon ignored him as usual.

"So I guess a play on that old adage...'lucky at cards, unlucky at love' holds true for you….chum." He figured he might as well get in one more dig, suspecting Illya might not be familiar with the saying.

"Luck had nothing to do with it, nor is there any correlation between card games and one's love life. Where do you come up with these things my friend? There is simply no scientific basis to back that statement, though it might make an interesting behavioral study. I wonder if Mr. Waverly would approve…"

"Illya, I think it is time for you to go to bed after all," Napoleon cut him off, as his partner was now getting on his nerves.

"I will gladly oblige," Illya smiled, rising from his chair and making a beeline upstairs to the bedroom; happy that his devious calculating had finally worked it's way round to what he really wanted, and that was simply to go to sleep for a few hours.

Napoleon sniffed, sitting there absentmindedly playing with the single dime and rolling it from the top of one finger to another and back again.

Somehow he had a sinking feeling that he'd been had...again, and not just in the card game.

He needed something to keep himself awake, and headed off to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot of coffee..

* Durak, meaning 'fool', is the card game of choice in the majority of Russia. It is mainly played as a drinking game with the fool being the loser.


End file.
